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To answer such questions, it's not a bad idea to define our terms. A demon is someone who disagrees with me on an issue that I feel strongly about, and therefore I am justified in attacking him in the most exaggerated ways. So if you demonize someone, you are really just revealing yourself.

Vice President Cheney focused his energies almost exclusively on protecting the American people in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The fact that we have not been attacked in over seven years is not a coincidence. It is because of the perseverance of leaders like President Bush and Vice President Cheney. That is the standard by which Cheney's Vice Presidency should be judged.

Dick Cheney and I served side by side in the house Republican leadership -- he as conference chairman and whip while I was chairman of the Republican Policy Committee. I have long thought of him as a friend and I like him. If Dick were being 'demonized,' I could, and would, defend him, but of course I can't, since what he's accused of, he's guilty of. If he were 'demonic,' I could, and would, attack him, but of course I can't since he is not demonic but, worse, quite seriously, and, frankly, dangerously cavalier about the protections built into the Constitution to ensure that the people do not lose control of their government.

(As an aside, the constant assault on Cheney has been somewhat silly of the left, since it gives the president a free pass when he, not Cheney, is the ultimate decider and should not be allowed to get off the hook as a poor deceived dupe, with Cheney as his Rasputin. This is Bush's presidency and the abuses which have flowed from it are his responsibility.)

Back to Cheney. Dick is a sincere public servant who takes seriously the obligation to ensure the safety of the American people. Those who ascribe sinister motivation are as loony as they presume him to be. But what could be more frightening than somebody who so rabidly believes in the righteousness of his cause that any means -- even those expressly forbidden -- are acceptable in pursuit of worthwhile ends. The vice president knows it is the responsibility of government to ensure the safety of the citizenry. He fails to understand that it is equally the responsibility of government to "protect and defend" the constitution that is at the heart of our very form of government.

To some disturbing extent, Dick loves America but fails to thoroughly understand exactly what America is: a nation that puts in the hands of the peoples' representatives the authority to decide both law and policy -- whether to go to war, spending priorities, tax policies. A nation that does not -- simply does not -- torture. A nation that does not throw people into prison and hold them there for years without charges or an opportunity to prove their innocence. These are not merely constitutional suggestions: they are at the very heart of who we are as a people. That, not military strength or economic advantage, is the true root of American "exceptionalism." Dick Cheney’s "villainy" is not his excessive Americanism but his insufficient Americanism -- his thorough lack of understanding of who, and what, we are, and what limits exist on the presidency, and why those limits are imposed.

Dick Cheney is not a demon; nor has been demonized. He is simply inadequately educated as to what his office is, what the president's office is, and what America is. And that has been, frankly, a quite scary combination of deficiencies.

From the moment that Dick Cheney was announced as George W. Bush's running mate in 2000, their mutual political opponents went after Cheney with a particular ferocity. The reason was simple to understand; as a former White House Chief of Staff, Congressman and House Republican Whip (if he did not get pulled out of the House to become Defense Secretary and all other things remained equal, Cheney--not Newt Gingrich--would have become Speaker of the House of Representatives after the 1994 Republican takeover) and Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney had gained nearly 4 decades of experience in knowing how to operate in Washington. Add to that experience Cheney's fully formed views on government and his formidable intellect (according to Barton Gellman's biography of Cheney. Alan Greenspan placed Cheney in the same intellectual class as Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon with the distinction that Cheney outclassed both Clinton and Nixon in the ability to turn strategic goals into operational plans) and you have a major political player. Opponents of the Bush Administration readily understood that if they could work to cripple Cheney politically, they would go a long way towards crippling the Administration as a whole.

So the effort to make Dick Cheney look bad was one that was launched at the very outset of his return to public life after eight years of political exile during the Clinton Administration. To be sure, I don't agree with all of the Vice President's decisions and there are a number with which I serious disagree but it was not the Vice President's activities that brought about this demonization. Rather, he was a target and would have remained a target no matter what he did during his eight years in the Vice Presidency because he was and remains the Administration's most experienced player and perhaps its smartest as well. There was no way that Democrats or other Administration opponents weren't going to go after Dick Cheney; in politics, one just doesn't let the other side's best player go about his/her work with no interference whatsoever unless one is willing to lose.

This demonization has made it difficult to assess Cheney's legacy at least for the near term. Having people tell us--presumably with a straight face--that Cheney "shredded the Constitution" does not particularly help matters. The Constitution remains in its pristinely unshredded state and our system of government has not been jeopardized by the fact that Dick Cheney has been Vice President; hyperbole to the contrary notwithstanding, this most recent election cycle will bring to office a President and a Vice President who are diametrically opposed to the politics and policies of Vice President Cheney, something that would not have been conceivable had our Constitution been as "shredded" as Cheney-critics (hysterically) claim that it has been. Now, I believe that Cheney should have been more incremental in his assertion of Presidential powers since the backlash to his arguments has likely curbed Presidential powers for a time (though I should add that many of those who objected to the significant assertion of Presidential powers during the Bush Administration will likely drop their objections just as soon as Barack Obama utters the words "so help me God" at the end of his Oath of Office). I don't think that techniques like waterboarding work and that they should not have been tried; to my mind, a strong case has been made for the expansion of FBI interrogation techniques that work significantly better and likely will not cause any kind of counter-reaction from the Supreme Court. But as Steven Calabresi rightly points out, there has been no major terrorist attack on American soil since September 11th--an occurrence thought inconceivable in the immediate aftermath of the attack when we all assumed that we would see more terrorist incidents in the United States. This is a remarkable achievement and it certainly indicates that the Bush Administration has done something right in its efforts to keep America safe. Funny how the demonizers never mention that.

We've seen the demonization effort on the subject of Iraq as well. Cheney was accused of having pressured the intelligence community and the Administration was accused of having lied the nation into war, even though such allegations have been thoroughly debunked (see this editorial as well as the findings of the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission.) Weapons of mass destruction were not found in Iraq but the Kay and Duelfer Commissions both pointed out that because the sanctions against Iraq were fraying, absent an effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Iraq would have been able to quickly restart its WMD-related activities. Again, these are uncomfortable facts for the demonizers to discuss, which is why they never do so. But facts are stubborn things and when one gets past the demonization effort, one finds that there are more facts on the Vice President's side on the issue of Iraq than his critics give him credit for.

Concerning the most recent contretemps between the Vice President and the Vice President-elect, I was interested to see that in his . . . er . . . inimitable way, Joe Bidenhas decided to inform us that he will be "honchoing" a task force on the middle class. "Honchoing," has apparently become a verb. Imagine if President Bush said something like that, etc.But so long as we are accepting this neologism, let it be noted that Dick Cheney has decided to honcho the education of Joe Biden by pointing out Biden's misconceptions concerning the role of the Vice President and the Executive Branch in general under the Constitution. For the record, the following is what the Vice President-elect said in his debate with Governor Palin:

"BIDEN: Vice President Cheney has been the most dangerous vice president we've had probably in American history. The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch. He works in the Executive Branch. He should understand that. Everyone should understand that.

"And the primary role of the vice president of the United States of America is to support the president of the United States of America, give that president his or her best judgment when sought, and as vice president, to preside over the Senate, only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote. The Constitution is explicit."

I take the phrase "The idea he doesn't realize that Article I of the Constitution defines the role of the vice president of the United States, that's the Executive Branch" as being indicative of Biden's belief--at least at the time--that the powers of the Executive Branch (and not just the Vice President) are defined in Article I of the Constitution. At the very least, this is clumsy phrasing and at worst, Biden really did believe that Article I definedExecutive Branch powers. Why he didn't get more grief over this--especially given the fact that--as Cheney pointed out--Biden was a longtime Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and taught Constitutional law as an adjunct professor, is beyond me.

And the reference to the Vice President presiding over the Senate "only in a time when in fact there's a tie vote" is completely and entirely wrong. As the President of the Senate, the Vice President may preside anytime he/she wants. The Vice President may only vote in the event of a tie, but that is another issue entirely.

Perhaps the Vice President-elect could read up more on these and other matters before he is asked to "honcho" anything. I'd hate to think that policy on any front is being honchoed by someone who has yet to honcho the Constitution.

The virulency with which the Bushhaters and Cheneyphobes have attacked the exiting Vice President contrasts too sharply with how casually they have accepted the public safety fruits of his efforts and how easily they have forgotten the hard choices confronted along the way. One does not have to embrace all of his philosophies and actions to be grateful that it was Cheney, and not the fecklessly logorrheic Joe Biden, who was manning the tower walls after what was to have been only the first of many planned attacks on US soil. And nothing epitomizes the thoughtlessness of Cheney's liberal critics than their vengeful attempt to expose US telecom companies to punitive lawsuits for their good-faith cooperation with government counterterrorism efforts. This vengeance, on display today again in The Arena and elsewhere as the moving vans head to Observatory Circle, long ago became as unhinged from a genuine concern for constitutional limits as it is from the realities of Islamic terrorism.

Already we are seeing an attempt to re-write the history of the run-up to the Iraq war by the very people who are accusing the Administration of doing the same thing. Specifically, Cheney and others far more above reproach (Powell and Rice) are now being accused of fabricating information in a manner that was practically impossible. And I almost (I said almost) agree with Cheney when he says that the case for invading Iraq was strong enough even without the existence of weapons of mass destruction: Saddam Hussein's ambitions were sufficiently vile and his threat sufficiently inevitable (especially to Israel) that it may have been worth testing the "first strike" taboo in order to prevent a future, wider and more disastrous conflict than even the one we entered into.

"Patriot" -- a person who puts country above self -- is a term too cliched and adopted too often by delusional pretenders, ranging Oliver North to Jane Fonda, for me to use without a little heartburn. Many people can rightly be called patriots, from the whistleblower in the Pentagon who risks his career over principle, to the elected official who risks his popularity, profile and even his legacy over what he believes to be his first obligation to Americans and their constitution: protect and defend. Dick Cheney was not an antidemocratic ideologue looking to achieve fame and power, but he did wield it in an unusually sophisticated and (in my view) sufficiently sensitive manner toward that single, unquestionably worthy end. Accordingly, even though "patriot" is a term that doesn't seem to fit George W. Bush (or any president for that matter), I believe his Vice President can wear the title quite comfortably as he heads off to his ranch in Wyoming, his home on the Chesapeake and his place in history.

Vice-President Cheney, uninterested in his own electoral viability, saw clearly and viscerally the latent power in the vice-president's office with the occupant as sage adviser, policy manufacturer, and non-accountable prime minister. Give the man some credit. The vice-presidency has heretofore been a power backwater. Most vice-presidents couldn't even get into the room when the major decisions got made. Most presidents (and more so their staffs) have viewed their vice president as political china, especially when the vice-president had obvious electoral ambitions. Those ambitions tended to keep vice presidents in check. But Cheney was unconstrained by such traditional political calculation. It was an impressive, innovative, and radical vision of the office. But the advice (invade Iraq), the policies (secret wire-tapping, international rendition, Guantanamo, torture), and the ministering (Plame controversy) have been tragic, poisonous, and unnecessary. Meanwhile, Cheney never gives an inch; his implacability invites the demonization. The attacks on September 11, 2001 scared the devil out of the man--not the patriot, not the lifelong public servant, not the loving father--and his response has been to over-correct out of fear and paranoia. Safe to predict that we'll find out more eye-popping secrets about the Cheney era in the next couple of decades.

The Cheney story is a tragedy. It is one of those dramas where someone is brought forward in time from the past and the comedy or tragedy flows from the conflicts that surround a person out of his time. And in this tragedy the anti-hero's actions result in the exact opposite of his claimed goals.

Cheney learned in the 1970s that the United States was at daggers drawn with the Soviet Union and that the Democrat congress was tying the hands of a weakened Republican president--Nixon and then Ford. He became VP in 2001 after the Soviet Union was destroyed and the Republicans controlled the House and Senate. Cheney missed both developments and began to store power in the executive like a mad squirrel preparing for winter. Secrecy and accumulated power in the White House became ends, not even corrupt means. He ended up defending torture and bailing out the GM unions at the expense of the Constitution and America.

Though he does bear a striking resemblance to Montgomery Burns (albeit, heavier), demonic is a bit too strong and a little too metaphysical for me. But let's see -- shredded the Constitution (torture, secret detentions, and spying on American citizens, just for starts) and, with it, respect for our nation around the world; lied us into a war that has taken tens of thousands of lives, brought untold suffering to millions of innocents, and left an already volatile and dangerous Middle East, more volatile and dangerous; etc -- a demonic agenda, to be sure, but still...

Here's one thing the partnership of Dick Cheney and George Bush has taught us: having a theory of government always trumps not having one. Cheney came into office with a full-fledged worldview about the preeminence of executive power and with a felt need to amplify that preeminence. His theory of government has been too often wrong, Constitutionally and morally, and has had more harmful costs to domestic liberty and foreign relations that we have time to recount here. But Cheney's theory would never have gotten as much traction had the president himself not been such a blank slate and so incapable of shifting the default settings Cheney chose. Bottom line: Cheney, demon; Bush, demon-enabler.

The demonizing of Dick Cheney has its roots in the marketing of the Iraq War. The Left had already determined that George W. Bush would get the Ronald Reagan treatment. Bush was obviously a half-wit rube from the Bible Belt who did not have the intellect to sell a bogus case for weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a tyrant. Therefore, it had to be an “angler” from the “dark side” that “lied to” the then-Senate Majority Leader and soon-to-be Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle and convinced him to sponsor the invasion resolution in the Senate. But it took more than the human Vice President Dick Cheney to convince the wily and sophisticated junior senator from New York and soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Saddam Hussein was overseeing the development of weapons that would hold the world hostage. It actually took literally scores of demon-possessed operatives from the intelligence community and the Pentagon to provide the “faulty intelligence” that would persuade the experienced and savvy then-Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman and soon-to-be Vice President Joe Biden with the self-evident proof that a mushroom cloud over Scranton was in our future if the Butcher of Baghdad was not vanquished. It was either the demon, Dick Cheney, that acted as the puppet master in all of this or the two-thirds of the American people who wanted Saddam removed from power militarily that motivated these paragons of political courage. Let’s go with the “demon” story. It’s much more convenient than the wetting-your-finger-and-sticking-it-into-the-wind angle.

Dick Cheney: So much bravado, so little justice. Despite 7 years of tough talk, torture, warrantless wiretaps, a war of choice in a country that did not attack us on 9/11, and insufficient care for our servicemembers, Osama bin Laden and his terrorist cohorts are still at large. Rather than engage with more empty words in a juvenile game of "quien es mas macho?" with his successor, Cheney ought to pursue serious efforts to find bin Laden and to ensure better care for our troops and veterans.

The Bush-Cheney Administration, including both Bush and Cheney themselves personally, are the victims of a “Borking.” A Borking occurs when the left wing media and intelligentsia detect a threat to cultural and sexual liberalism or to socialism, and they respond by viciously smearing and distorting beyond recognition the reputation of the person they see as a threat. The first person to be Borked was, of course, Bork himself who was attacked as a crazy, outside-the-mainstream, Supreme Court nominee, even though he was the leading legal scholar and government lawyer of his generation.

Other prominent officials to be Borked have included Dan Quayle, the first President Bush, and the current President Bush. Far from being a lightweight, the current President Bush has delivered us eight years of freedom from terrorist attacks at home and of spectacular economic growth.

The demonization of Dick Cheney is part of the Left’s wholesale Borking of the current Administration. Cheney is being attacked because he is bright, effective, and gets things done. The Left finds that intolerable and so it has set out to destroy him as a person. He has been accused of absurd conflicts of interest growing out of his days in the oil industry, of lying to get us into war in Iraq, and of subverting the administration of justice by condoning the overly rough interrogation tactics of three top Al Qaeda fighters in U.S. custody including Khalid Sheik Muhammad.

This smear job is a smear job just as the portrayal of Bork as having been outside the legal mainstream was a smear job. Cheney’s and the Administration’s policies have kept us completely safe from terrorist attacks in the domestic United States since 9/11. This is an extraordinary achievement that too many people are taking for granted. Cheney’s and the Administrations tax policies have also led to spectacular economic growth during most of their eight years in office. This prosperity has also been taken for granted. Someday soon people will look back on the peace and prosperity of the Bush-Cheney years with longing. It is at that point that the Borking of Cheney and Bush will finally be understood as the Left wing smear job it really was. Why does the Left engage in Borking smears? Because vicious personal attacks on conservatives in government are the only way the Left can get the policy results it likes in a nation that wants low taxes and spending, a muscular defense against terrorist attacks, and judges who follow the law rather than making it up.

Re Cheney, I have long believed that he is responsible for Bush's many mistakes, but not in the way people may think. I don't necessarily believe that bad things happened because Cheney pushed for them. Rather, I think he provided crucial support when Bush made bad decisions.

The reason why this matters is because Cheney is in many ways the anti-Bush-he is everything Bush isn't. Thus Bush is aggressively anti-intellectual, while Cheney did all the work for a Ph.D. except the dissertation and contemplated a career in academia. Bush knows nothing about Congress and has undisguised disdain for the institution, while Cheney served in the House of Representatives for many years and was a member of the leadership. Bush came to the presidency knowing nothing about national security except what he may have picked up from his father, while Cheney had been Secretary of Defense.

So we see that whenever Bush received information or advice he didn't like, Cheney was always there to tell him that it could safely be ignored. If a dissenting view came to Bush from some expert, Cheney, the former academic, could tell him that these eggheads don't know what they are talking about.

He knows because he once was one. If members of Congress criticized some Bush decision, Cheney, the former congressman, was there to say that they don't know what they are talking about. He knows because he once was one.

If someone on the White House staff tried to talk Bush out of some mistake, Cheney, the former White House chief of staff, knew exactly how to short-circuit the effort. And if some general tried to tell Bush that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or that he was not committing nearly enough troops to occupy the country, former Defense Secretary Cheney was there to tell Bush that their concerns were baseless.

I believe that without Dick Cheney being there to back up every Bush mistake he might have fewer of them. It wasn't so much that Cheney was the vice president, but because he could legitimately claim to be as much of an authority as those who might have mounted opposition to Bush's plans. Thus Cheney has been the ultimate enabler and thereby bears much of the blame for the many screw-ups that Bush has been responsible for.

Demonic or Demonized depends on your political perspective. What we do know is there is a strong argument that he has been the most influential Vice President in American history at many levels: he has expanded the institutional power of his office, he has played an extraordinarily important role in policymaking, and he has been one the driving intellectual forces in the Bush administration. Additionally, Cheney has been a pivotal political force in defining relations with Congress. The power of the Vice President has been steadily expanding since the 1960s but we have never seen anything like this before.

Ah, so the rehabilitation of Dick Cheney has begun. He wasn't really the demon the lefties made him out to be, just a tough talking, sage fellow from the West who rode into town, dispensed a little frontier justice, and now wants nothing more than to ride back to his ranch.

Puleeezzz!

This is why we can't leave things to the spin-meisters. We need to turn over the rocks and shine some light into the dark secrets of the Bush administration. I am virtually certain that the things actually done were far, far more frightening than the little bits and pieces that we know now. And that Cheney's fingerprints are all over them.

It's not so much Dick Cheney; it's the President himself. Arguably, Dick Cheney has not changed much over the years. He has had neoconservative leanings from the outset, including while serving the administration of Bush 41. According to one member of the cabinet who had served with Cheney in both administrations, and whom I interviewed, the difference was in the President (and other influential members of the cabinet). In essence, Cheney was contained by a more moderate cabinet and a more moderate Bush 41 and went along with the consensuses. In the current administration, the best interpretation is that Bush is in ideological agreement with Cheney (and was not in agreement with Powell, in contrast). This empowers Cheney and enables him to play the role of bad cop. It's about time that the focus shifts to the President and that we stop pretending that he is an innocent bystander simply manipulated by a conniving Cheney.

It will be nice to have a vice president who understands that the president was elected to conduct foreign and domestic policy and that the vice president's role is advice, not consent. Dick Cheney was permitted to distort his role by the willingness of a weak president to be pushed around. Thank goodness that era is coming to an end.

Demonized or demonic? Let’s just say Cheney did the devil’s work. My Cheney problem dates from the post-911 period in which he elevated his own importance above that of the president and then apparently manipulated events to favor the Iraq war, even before the excesses of Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, torture, and attacks on civil liberties for U.S. citizens. And he often got away with it. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s July 2004 report on Iraq intelligence failures concluded that Bush administration officials “made no attempt” to coerce, pressure, or influence CIA analysts who provided flawed information about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction that supported the case for war. Ha ha ha.

Cheney and other administration officials stated publicly that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before any meaningful intelligence analysis was conducted. Cheney allegedly visited CIA headquarters several times before the war. Policy makers apparently asked analysts repeatedly to review or reconsider judgments. Democratic Senators Jay Rockefeller, Richard Durbin, and Carl Levin signed a dissenting addendum, arguing what most of us know from experience: It doesn’t take a direct order from the boss for workers to see things the boss’s way. The Senate report accused the CIA of interpreting ambiguous evidence as conclusive, ignoring or discounting conflicting information, failing to consider alternatives, and blurring the line between fact and theory. But it seemed to be Cheney that apparently made the “right answer” clear to the CIA. That’s just one example. The verdict of history will be that Cheney’s views and actions consistently pushed events in the direction of more violence and less freedom.

Demonized or demon? These are not mutually exclusive. Cheney was intimately involved in most of the worst blunders of the Bush presidency (Iraq, torture, lax regulation, etc.), and the driving force behind the campaign to maximize Presidential power and overturn our traditional system of checks and balances. Future generations will be impressed by the influence he wielded, and equally awed by the damage he did the country. Some people get the reputation they deserve.

The assaults on Cheney are reflective of the "poisoning" of policy by a democratic party that was in the wilderness and could not ignore the opportunity provided by "no WMD" and the troubled occupation in Iraq to argue its way back into power, trashing the White House's every action.

There’s so much wrong about Dick Cheney, including his view of the imperial Presidency, his 19th century views on transparency in government, his involvement in aiding and abetting torture, his contempt for civil liberties, his warping of the underpinnings of the VP office (to paraphrase Nixon, when the VP does it, it is not a crime.) It goes on and on. Perhaps one of the more important mistakes was over-attention to bioterrorism at the expense of neglecting natural disasters (see the move-FEMA-into-DHS fiasco.) His obsession with 9/11 came through clearly in his recent interview (calling it a “high point”). We saw the results of that in NOLA.

Bush doesn’t get all the blame for this (though he deserves most of it, much was on Cheney’s advice. Cheney’s poll ratings are lower than Bush’s, which is not easy to do.) In fact, because of the secrecy he worked behind, it will take years simply to find out much of what he’s done. That alone has ruined Cheney’s legacy.

In my opinion, Vice President Cheney is, as the vice president-elect has put it, the most dangerous vice president in U.S. history due to his radical, not - conservative, view of the office of the presidency, appearing to believe it is the superior of the three branches of government and, at times, at least on national security and military considerations, able to act unilaterally and contrary to law.

Having that opinion, however, does not believe I challenge his sincerity or good faith. From what I understand, since I have never met him, he is a good father, good husband, and loyal friend. And a patriot who loves his country. He may be wrong -- but he is not evil.

Karen Spears Zacharias (guest)
editorial writer , NC:

What a silly notion it is to suggest that Rick Warren isn't fit to lead a prayer simply because Obama has views that Warren doesn't share. Can you imagine these sorts of criticisms hurled at Billy Graham? In Graham's day we expected his views to be different than the presidents he served. Graham was a spiritual leader, not a politician.

Jeff Roberson (guest)
Dad , OH:

Dick Cheney - demonic, no; war criminal, yes; abuser of the Constitution, yes; foul mouthed and uncouth, yes; bad shot, yes.
Dick Cheney deserves no less then to be held accountable for his actions as Vice President and our Constitutional democracy will suffer as long as he is NOT held accountable.

Edward Stroligo (guest)
Writer , NY:

Let's wait until Judgment Day. That will probably be our first chance to get an authoritative yet impartial opinion. Then again, if the Rapture occurs soon, and Cheney gets GodExed, you'll get your answer a lot faster and then have a REALLY interesting Arena session. :)

Stefan Saal (guest)
sculptor , NH:

One of the few lingering mysteries of the Bush administration is how could experienced men such as Cheney and Rumsfeld manage things so badly. Did their prior experience relieve them of their healthy share of humility? Did their self-certainty make it impossible for them to be troubled by things that trouble more ordinary men? A lesson our nation is now forced to re-learn in so many ways: Power corrupts.

Phil Gonzalez (guest)
retired , TX:

Well if you listen to the Democrats, they may demonize Cheney. On the other hand if you listen to the terrorist they may say Cheney is demonic. Not to worry. Biden is going to correct the image of the VP. There's nothing wrong in twiddling your thumbs and attending funerals, is there Biden. President Bush couldn't have been the President he was for his term had it not been for Cheney. Cheney is the rock this country needed after we were attacked.

Shiva Goel (guest)
Student , VA:

I am ok with Rick Warren.
But please. My acceptance of him is not based on some principled notion of tolerating disagreement and valuing vigorous pluralistic debate. The philosophy that undergirds those very same principles rejects Proposition 8 as wholly inconsistent.
So I am not obliged to tolerate homophobia and anti-gay discrimination. Nor am I compelled, however, to completely ostracize its practitioners. The correct reason to accept Pastor Warren is that his sin will not forgive mine if I play my part in stoking a cultural war that compromises our democracy by inviting manipulation and deceit, and compromises my agenda in being entirely counterproductive to it.

Drnnis Murphy (guest)
Retiree , WI:

Since neither Bush nor Cheney left much evidence of what really happened.The near empty of documents Bush's Presidential Library will mirror the finances of the citizenry that they destroyed to further their secret agendas.Maybe after the 2004 election nearly half of us deserved that fate too!Cheney and Bush deserve any punishment anyone from anywhere could possibly mete out to them.Obviously they were the puppets of Big Oil.The final nail for the economy was the $5 a gallon gasoline that they strove so long to get!

Anthony Noel (guest)
business writer , NC:

Anyone (I'm talking to you, James Carafano) who seriously believes that Vice President Cheney did not make his own bed and will not, therefore, leave his own legacy as a censor and ideas-over-reality delusionist needs look no further than the way he restricted press freedom during the Persian Gulf War. The Carafanos of the world who bought Mr. Cheney's tripe that the restrictions he enacted were necessary to ensure national security should be ashamed of themselves. Some restrictions? Sure. But not blanket censorship -- not ever. As for the (formerly) Hon. Rep. Hostettler, I'll give you this much sir: When you revise history, you don't miss a facet. I don't suppose there's any room for the truth in your view: Specifically, that Mr. Cheney and our President put the fear of the 9/11 attacks to work immediately in rallying the 2/3 support you cite. Many, including our new President - unencumbered, unlike Sens. Biden and Clinton by the political fallout Mr. Cheney had already proved more than happy to visit upon his adversaries, good of the country be damned - were able to speak out against the war. I'm proud to have been one of them, and you, sir, had you the spine for it, could have been one as well. But toe that line instead. It worked out so well for you in '06.

Jill Cerino (guest)
Social Worker, Private Practice :

Since when did bigotry and antisemitism graduate from cancers to mere ideas in the public square good people can disagree on?
By this logic, why shouldn't we invite an anti-semitic minister (oops, already did that), a racist minister or one who conducts clitorectomies in his village? By Obama's logic, these are just more people of ideas. Obama's rhetoric is bland, morally dubious and irritatingly self serving on this. He's already running for re-election and it shows.

Takeesha Pittman (guest)
Operation Support , AL:

For all of Cheney's broad assessments about how he changed the role of VP; he failed to admit to how he weakened his own President. My problem with Cheney is that he talks a good game; he boast about how we will get the terrorists - except bin Laden is still at large after 7 years of him manipulating the Constitution. 19 of the 25 highjackers were from Saudi Arabia - we have no public information explaining how that happened. I mean in country that we are friendly towards there are people that want to kill Americans. No one talks about that at all. Cheney should do himself a favor and stop relying on history to be kind to him and just be honest and say "on some of the policies we persued - I fucked up" since he likes using vulgarities.

Sean Moore (guest)
Government Relations , MD:

How exactly does one go about further demonizing a man who: did everything necessary to avoid the Vietnam draft (5 times); was 1 of just 21 members of the House to oppose the Safe Drinking Water Act in '86; repeatedly voted against funding for the Veterans Administration; opposed extending the Civil Rights Act; fought against efforts to clean up hazardous waste; opposed the release of Nelson Mandella from prison; shot his friend in the face; worked surreptitiously to push the U.S. into the Iraq war; has had a hand in helping 3 presidents circumvent congress; has worked tirelessly to eliminate any checks on the power of the White House, and has been involved in countless other dubious affairs?

Robert Conner (guest)
writer , WA:

Try to imagine the response of the participants in this forum if a public referendum invalidated the marriages of 8000 Mormons, or Jews, or Baptists (God forbid), or Muslims or Catholics. Imagine the outrage, the screaming, the seething anger, the accusations of Nazism, the demonstrations, the tidal wave of angry phone calls to elected officials. Apparently the marriages of 8000 American citizens who happen to be homosexual is merely the cost of doing business with Rick Warren's political machine...oh, sorry, I meant to say "megachurch."

Warren is a shill, a huckster, a Johnny-come-lately "activist" trying to make the bizarre, counter-factual, threadbare theology of his church "relevant" by selectively engaging social problems that have been around for decades and used for decades as weapons by his co-religionists. When fundamentalists discovered that "AIDS is God's judgment" wasn't playing anymore outside their "base," they suddenly discovered "compassion." When they realized that global climate change is supported by multiple lines of evidence and that it was no longer fashionable or safe to scoff at that evidence, a few of them suddenly "got religion" on the issue. A day late, a dollar short, and at the wrong address, they want extra credit for discovering basic human decency and social responsibility. By all means let's trot out this theocrat and have him pray for democracy. What a joke.

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